Fleet dispatching strategies in competitive multi-regional ride-hailing markets

The rapid growth and intense competition within multi-regional ride-hailing markets necessitate analytical frameworks to predict the strategic behavior of competing companies. This paper develops a multi-player non-cooperative game-theoretic aggregate model where companies optimize their fleet dispatching across regions to maximize revenue. We first prove the existence of a Nash Equilibrium for this vehicle dispatching game by establishing the asymptotic quasi-concavity of the payoff functions. This rigorous approach replaces simple parameter constraints with the analytical verification that, beyond a certain operational fleet threshold, the market behavior is sufficient to guarantee equilibrium existence. Leveraging this foundational framework, we conduct extensive numerical experiments, first analyzing the dispatching-only scenario, followed by an expanded analysis where both dispatching and pricing are jointly optimized for comparison. The results consistently demonstrate that the relative fleet size of a company profoundly dictates its optimal dispatching and pricing strategies. We find that while competition is fundamentally beneficial for society by maximizing the served demand, it may also intensify the price war, potentially harming the financial stability of the industry. This trade-off underscores the regulatory challenge of maintaining a balance between industry sustainability and social welfare by adjusting the scale among competitors and controlling the overall supply.